


Ceasefire

by Littlebiscuits



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Comfort, M/M, Sharing Clothes, Sickness, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 06:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16424471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebiscuits/pseuds/Littlebiscuits
Summary: There hasn't been a broadcast from John Seed for five days. Rook is determined to find out why.





	Ceasefire

**Author's Note:**

> I have a cold, and I've been feeling lazy and unproductive, so I made this thing

There hasn't been a broadcast from John Seed for five days. 

Rook has been in the valley the whole time, making trips from Fall's End, to the Lamb of God church, to the Pumpkin Farm and back again, with the occasional stop to liberate someone tied up by the side of the road. He can't help but notice the lack of John's usual smugness and judgement through the radio, mostly because the whole valley has been quieter than usual. There hasn't been a single explosion, or fuel convoy, or asshole in a plane hounding him, for almost a week.

Which is deeply strange, because John seems to enjoy sharing with Rook exactly what he thinks of him, sometimes on a near hourly basis. Or to push the power of yes, like he gets a commission on every DVD sold. Hell, sometimes John preaches down the radio at him, for no reason at all, usually when he's trying to sleep, offering another baptism, and promising to do it right this time. And Rook's honestly not sure if that means in the more traditional sense, or if he's actually going to drown him this time. 

Though John has been trying to save his soul by any means necessary for more than a month, and Rook has been doing his best to prove that he doesn't need saving. Mostly by stealing his convoys, destroying his silos and liberating at least two churches, while replying to every one of John's suggestive threats with one of his own. Until Grace had muttered something annoyed about 'infatuated preschoolers,' and stopped taking his complaints about John seriously.

But the sudden silence is...unsettling. 

A normal person would probably enjoy the freedom from a constantly nagging Herald, from the insults and the accusations, and the promise of painful confession, They'd probably take the opportunity to cause as much chaos as they could, with impunity. 

But Rook doesn't like it. It doesn't feel right. John's become a familiar part of the valley, like the long stretches of farmland, bright red silos, and unexpected bear attacks.

It doesn't seem likely that John's dead. Even if Rook knows damn well that would make almost everyone in the Resistance happy. But he thinks that piece of news would have been all over the valley within a day. Whether he'd had had anything to do with it personally or not, and he's pretty sure that Jacob or Joseph would have immediately set the valley on fire. 

The obvious answer is for Rook to go and find out for himself what's going on. It's not like he hasn't broken into John's house before. So he sends his companions back to town, stocks up on ammo, and heads for the ranch.

There are more guards outside than usual, more cars parked around the perimeter, and all the towers are manned, though there's no feeling of frantic motion about them, there's no activity that suggests something big is coming, just a taut, watchful feel to them all. Which makes it more difficult than usual to get inside the ranch unseen, to climb the side of the building and slip in through a window.

Rook discovers when he reaches the kitchen that John isn't dead, he's sitting at the table, paperwork pinned under his left elbow, an empty mug and a box of tissues by his right. He's squinting as he writes, shoulders hitching in quick, tight little coughs. He's wearing his ridiculous coat that's covered in tiny planes, even though the afternoon isn't that cool, and he's hunched over tightly like he's in pain, a flavour of exhausted tension to the way he's leaning his weight onto his elbows. Half his hair has fallen down in thin, greasy lines, but it's not enough to cover his face completely, and Rook's close enough to see that he's flushed, sweating at his hairline and throat.

He's a long way from the picture he'd made the last time Rook had seen him, in a bunker underground. When not a single thread had been out of place, and he'd smelled like oranges and cedar, with just a hint of murder.

"Well, you look like shit," Rook tells him. 

John's arm knocks into the mug, which it turns out wasn't quite as empty as Rook had thought, because it spills and then rolls off across the wood. John crumples the paper he'd been writing on, and glares at him.

"Breaking and entering now, Deputy?" John's voice is hoarse, cracking on every other word, though he seems to be pretending it isn't. "You seem determined to break the very rules you profess to uphold."

"In my defence, the window was open -"

"What do you want?" John asks simply, like he's decided he just doesn't have the energy for this today, and he's going to get it over with as quickly as possible. Which says a lot about how he's feeling, because Rook suspects the drama is John's favourite part.

"I came to check on you," Rook admits. "No one had heard from you for days and I wanted to -" 'See if you were alive,' seems impolite, even for Hope County. But 'make sure you were ok,' is clearly not the right way to phrase it. Even if Rook has to admit that he's doing exactly that, that he wouldn't have driven the whole way here, armed for a fight, if he hadn't been following some strange need to find out why John had gone radio silent. "See if you were ok," he decides eventually. Though that still feels a little too personal, makes it sound like they're friends who worry about each other.

John frowns at him, as if he's honestly not sure what to do with Rook's awkwardly phrased but undeniable concern. But Rook's close enough now that he can see the high flush on his throat, the unnatural brightness of his eyes above bruised lower lids. He has to wonder how long John's been sick for, how long he's been grinding his way through the day to day administration of a cult the size of Eden's Gate without enough rest.

"As you can see." John gestures slowly as if anything else is likely to knock him over. "I am still alive, despite all appearances to the contrary." The words are tight, and Rook gets the impression that John took Rook's first comment personally. 

Rook watches him push himself out of the chair, but his movement are careful, measured, like he's already reached the part where moving too fast is a threat to stability. Honestly, if even half the rumours Rook has heard about John's history are true, then there's a good chance his immune system is not up to this while so much is going on. If John doesn't start taking care of himself like a normal person, getting some rest, drinking some juice, maybe dosing himself on something, then there's going to be a messy crash in his future. John seems to prove him right a minute later, when he bends at the waist and starts coughing like he has glass in his throat, all dry cracks and snaps that look like they hurt. 

There's a slow sway, and Rook sees John reach for the table, to steady himself, or hold himself up. But Rook gets there first - suddenly has the warm, solid curve of John's Seed's waist in his hands, stopping the stumble while he coughs, and coughs, and then finally breathes without it cracking halfway through. This may be the closest they've been since John tried to drown him, since he put his hands on Rook, when the whole world was sparkles and light, and threw him underwater.

Only this time he's the one holding John while he struggles to breathe, which feels like a strange, amusing irony.

"I do not require your assistance," John croaks out eventually, very carefully eases out of Rook's hold, only to have to steady himself against the counter afterwards.

"Sure," Rook says. "You're clearly fine." Though he has to give John credit for his stubborn refusal to give in to the inevitable.

"I have preparations to make. I have communications to provide, deliveries to oversee." John stops talking and just breathes for a moment, like the effort it takes to be superior to his obvious illness has worn him out. "And if I require manual labour I have a ranch full of loyal followers."

Rook doesn't think any of the men outside know how ill John actually is. That he's working very hard to make sure that none of them find out. Rook would be surprised if any of them are even allowed to come inside. He lifts a hand and lays it on John's forehead, and the man immediately grumbles complaint and grasps his wrist to pull it free. But Rook has already established that John is a sweaty, overheated mess, and if he's not careful he's going to collapse in the kitchen while filling out paperwork.

"Have you been drinking enough?" Rook vividly remembers his grandmother always asking him that, every time he'd been sick as a child. 

"Have I been - what are you doing here?" John's voice is raw and soft, under the demand, like it's just occurred to him that this is not normal. Rook is not supposed to be here, not supposed to be across enemy lines, worrying about him, and asking him if he's been drinking enough, holding him up while he coughs. "Don't you have better things to do, things of mine to break, one of my brother's sermons to mock?"

"I'm declaring a ceasefire," Rook tells him. Because he thinks that might be the only way he's going to get John to stop for five minutes. 

"You can't just _declare a ceasefire_ , without my permission." John stops talking when the excitement provokes another coughing fit, that sounds like it brings up half his chest. His breathing still sounds dry and cracked afterwards, but he's holding himself stiffly, as if the thought of coughing again is unacceptable. 

"Well you won't tell anyone else that you're suffering - in a way that I'm pretty sure isn't good for the soul - and you don't give a shit what I think of you, so I guess you're kind of stuck with me and my decisions." Rook steers John carefully towards the stairs. "You're going to bed."

"I'm not going to bed," John says flatly, like that's a stupid suggestion, and he resents it. "I refuse to be sent to bed like a child. I have taken care of myself for years, and I can work through a _cold_." He's saying that like he means it, but he's barely resisting Rook's careful pushing, either because he can't, or because he doesn't really want to. 

"I've declared a ceasefire," Rook reminds him. "There's no work to do."

"You are not the extent of my responsibilities." John's voice breaks, and he stops halfway up the stairs, carefully getting his breath back. Rook moves in so John can lean back against him, and this time John doesn't resist, he lets Rook take his weight and gives hoarse, weak little exhales that crackle all the way out. "And that sounds an awful lot like pride -" John stops, pulls a face.

Rook manages an impressive combat maneuver to get John a tissue, just before he sneezes. Which, judging by his expression, causes a not inconsiderable amount of discomfort.

"Fuck," John croaks out, over the crumpled ball of white, then glares at Rook like this is all his fault. 

But Rook has been blamed for worse.

"Your responsibilities can wait a few days," he says gently. "You're a shitty Herald right now. You need sleep, you need liquids."

John's annoyed noise breaks in the middle, and he slowly starts moving again.

"I need one thing in this fucking valley to go right. For one plan to go off without a hitch. I need you to stop breaking things. I need Joseph to trust me for a change." John stops, coughs again, long enough that when it ends he gives a short noise of irritated frustration. "Why do you even fucking care -" John wavers at the bottom of the next flight of stairs, and Rook straightens him carefully. "This is what you wanted isn't it? This is what Jacob is so fucking invested in, kill the weak. Well, this is a perfect opportunity to stab me in the back -" John stops halfway up the next flight, breathes deeply for a minute, and resists the resulting rattle. He looks utterly exhausted.

Rook helps him the rest of the way, and John doesn't complain.

John's bedroom is at the very top of the ranch. It's large, and airy, and far less dramatic than Rook would have expected of the place where John sleeps. It's all muted colours and basic furniture. The sort of place Rook wouldn't have minded coming home to, if big wooden houses in the middle of nowhere were his thing.

Rook leaves John sitting on the end of the bed, with a command to undress and get inside it, while he heads downstairs for bottled water and tissues. Both of which were apparently more of an afterthought than ammunition, knives, money and fasteners for the cult. Which is yet more proof that Eden's Gate doesn't knows how to function when they're not at war with someone. And, yes, maybe its a little weird for him to be here in John's house, making sure John stops working, drinks something and gets some sleep. But Rook helps people that need it, it's what he does, even people that once tied him to a chair, threatened him with torture, and tried to tattoo him without his consent.

When Rook gets back upstairs John has not undressed, he's exactly where Rook left him, looking annoyed and petulant, as if he's been thinking about refusing all of Rook's very sensible demands, and going back downstairs to continue his work. Which is exactly the sort of stupid decision that he's probably not above making. But he lets Rook help him out of his coat, without fighting, and his vest. His shirt is damp with sweat, where he's been burning up underneath it. John strips it off himself in slow, tugging button pulls, then his jeans without a pause, as if there's no difference between half undressed and completely undressed to him. And this is more of John than Rook ever expected to see, skin not so much bare as _decorated_ , in scars and jagged words, or in hard black lines. There's not an inch of him that hasn't been punished, or made into a message. But at least he's doing as he's told. He needs a shower too, but that can probably wait until morning.

John takes one of the bottles of water that Rook brought up, without a thank you, and then drinks half of it. 

"Do you own a t-shirt?" Rook asks him.

"No," John says, mouth curling in amused distaste.

Rook simply drags one of his own out of his bag and puts it on him, to John's clear and obvious annoyance. But Rook's knows how the flu works, and John isn't going to be complaining in a few hours. It's a little surreal to be this close to him, taking the weight of John's arm, and forehead, while he drags cotton down his back, and the material falls a little comically off of John's left shoulder, leaving the spidery lines of a tattoo that he's never seen visible. Rook resists the urge to fix it, to slide the material back up over John's shoulder. 

"I consider this abusing a prisoner of war," John says snippily. As if being forced into something so ill-fitting is the worst sort of torture. 

Which makes Rook laugh. "Do you need help getting up?" he asks.

John makes an irritated noise, that gets stuck in his throat, and sets off another round of coughing.

"No, I do not need help getting up. I don't need to be coddled, I don't need a nursemaid. I have managed perfectly well on my own. Through far, far worse than this. I don't need you. You don't owe me anything -" John stops to cough again, which goes on longer than the last, until his voice is a wreck, whispery and soft under the soreness of his throat. 

Rook helps him get up, and John lets Rook maneuver him into bed, pillows dragged into a formation more to his liking, before throwing the sheets over him. John makes a soft, miserable noise when he lays down, but then a slightly less miserable noise when his face finds the cool material of the pillow.

John's contentment lasts five minutes. Before he sighs disgruntled annoyance, sliding from one side of the bed to the other, throwing the sheets off, complaining about being boiled alive. Which leaves Rook staring at John's naked, tattooed legs, at the tight stretch of black material across his upper thighs and ass, that Rook probably shouldn't slot into his long term memory, but he suspects that's going to happen anyway. The funny thing is, Rook's fairly sure John's not doing it on purpose, and that seems like the sort of thing he'd be all over if he knew Rook would appreciate it.

After a short period of muttering, and what Rook is fairly sure are insults directed at him, and his friends, and the entire Resistance, John eventually goes quiet, stops shifting like he's trying to avoid ants in the bed. It takes Rook a minute to realise he's asleep, though he's still making quiet, pained noises, every breath rasping up through his throat. Rook pulls the sheet back over him, sits in the chair that's pushed in beside the bed.

John should look vulnerable like this, exhausted, sick, sleeping in borrowed clothing two sizes too big. But instead, even like this, he keeps something of his unpredictable sharpness. Rook thinks that maybe John has lost the ability to be vulnerable, like he expects the world to hurt him now, there's nothing left to be afraid of any more, because it's all already happened to him, and he knows he can survive it. 

Which goes some way to explaining why John can't reach a hand out, without also digging his nails in, carving a warning into your skin, why he doesn't trust, why he wants to pull out people's lies for everyone to see.

Rook's honestly not sure whether to leave or not now. John has literally hundreds of fanatically loyal men under his command, that he could call inside on a whim. And it's only his own stubbornness, and pride, that will keep him from doing it. Rook's fairly certain that John isn't going to die of the flu, but he feels weirdly responsible now he's made him rest. As if he has a duty to make sure nothing untoward happens to him, in this huge house, surrounded by his own loyal soldiers. Rook's priorities may have gone wrong when he wasn't looking. But maybe you can't be in near-constant communication with someone without developing some sort of weird, antagonistic friendship. Even though you're technically supposed to be enemies, and one of you is aggressively trying to get you to join their cult. 

Rook's life was so much less confusing when he was just trying to be a good deputy.

So, he supposes he's staying to make sure John doesn't die, or collapse on the way to the bathroom, or something equally dramatic. Though he does briefly head downstairs, and steal dinner out of John's fridge, while he thinks about it, because it's the least the man can do after all.

At six in the evening, John pushes himself shakily upright for a coughing fit that sounds like it sets his throat bleeding, and leaves him retching into the trash. Rook holds his waist, and the shaking length of his arm, before finally setting him back against the headboard, drinking the last of the bottled water, while Rook heads downstairs for more.

By eight o'clock, John has slipped from hot to cold, dragging the sheets and the spare blanket folded at the bottom of the bed around himself.

"It's freezing," he complains, in a tone that seems to think the world is doing it on purpose. "Why is it...so fucking cold...why won't it...fuck."

Every time John lies down he coughs, every time he tries to haul himself upright, he coughs. Until he's exhausted, and miserable, and shivering like he's going to come apart at the seams.

"I can't...I wish this would stop...I can't concentrate...will you find me some more pillows...something." The last part is a demand more than a plea, but with the tired, croaking, roughness of John's voice they might as well be the same.

It's not a hard decision in the end, when faced with the frustrated misery of John, braced over a pillow on one shaking arm, like he doesn't have the energy for more. Rook strips his shirt and jeans off, and slips in behind him, hauls John back against the warmth of his body. Which John gives a grumbling protest over, before curling back into him, like Rook is the only source of warmth in the room.

Hope County, with its demands, and its disasters, and its drugged attack wolves and half naked cultists, and the utter refusal of either side to let Rook lay down and rest, they can all sort themselves out for one day.

"If you just said yes," John starts, around slow, jolting shivers that he can't control. "If you promised to join us, to come to confession. You could stay with us. You wouldn't have to fight us. We don't want to fight you. We need you. You could stay, you could just stay. We're preparing for the collapse, but we're running out of time. I want you to stay. I want you to confess, because you want to, because you want to give me your sins, so I can wash you clean. "

John's rambling slowly gets less coherent, rasping and confused.

"Shush, ceasefire," Rook tells him, which makes John cough frustrated laughter, and then slide round and curl into Rook's chest, with a little groan of surrender. It's more intimate than Rook intended, than he knows what to do with, if he's honest. Because it's John, and John is sharp, and brittle, and vicious, and he doesn't make any sense pressed into him like he trusts Rook not to knife him in his sleep. They're supposed to be enemies. They're supposed to follow the rules, that's how this _works_.

"Joseph thinks you're important," John murmurs, almost too quiet to hear, breath a flare of heat on Rook's skin. "He thinks you belong to us. That you can be convinced to stay. But I've learned to be disappointed."

John eventually stops shivering, stops coughing, stops muttering feverishly about sin and atonement, and falls asleep.

It's full dark outside, too dark to check his watch, but Rook thinks it's late, judging by how tired he is. It seems irresponsible to fall asleep in John's bed, to fall asleep dragging his fingers through the long, damp strands of his hair - in a way that no one is ever going to know about. It would be stupid to fall asleep here, but he's starting to think it isn't the stupidest thing he's going to do. So he doesn't fight it when his eyes start trying to fall shut.

The next time he wakes up it's almost light, and he's slipped all the way down to rest against the pillows. John is sprawled over him now, and one of his hands is pushed up under Rook's t-shirt, in a way that feels almost unbearably intimate, while he breathes hotly against the side of Rook's neck. There's a little rattle in his throat, and his skin still feels over-warm, but at least he's sleeping. Rook finds his arm tightening around John's waist before he remembers that he shouldn't. This wasn't supposed to be - this isn't what this was supposed to be. Even though that's exactly what it looks like, what it's starting to feel like as well.

Rook thinks he should probably leave, that he should climb his way free, pack up his things and go, and try to forget the image of the long sprawl of John's tattooed body wearing one of his more comfortable t-shirts. He should go before the ceasefire ends, and this officially becomes something he has to explain.

He's managed to stretch his way out from under John's leg when fingers catch at his waist, and there's a croaky sound of protest.

"Don't go," John murmurs, half asleep, voice still scratchy-thin.

Rook doesn't even think he's really awake, isn't sure that John will notice if he slides out the rest of the way, dresses in the dark and leaves him there, to ride out the rest of his sickness alone. But Rook gets the impression that John has lived through a lot of that, of people leaving in the middle of the night, of them abandoning him when he needs them the most. Too many times when people saw underneath the fake smiles and the fancy clothes, to the cracks beneath, and left him to cope on his own.

Rook drags the sheet up over John's shoulder again, draws his leg back into the bed.

"I'm not going anywhere. Go back to sleep."


End file.
